Bookshelves #11

Here we are starting the second half of the bookshelves series, and it’s a bit of a dud, or perhaps it’s fitting, as a few of these I’ve left only half-finished.

I like Mark Twain but haven’t read the one here. I think I got it at a library sale of old books many years ago. One day I’ll get around to it.

I put The Brothers Karamazov down about 700 pages into it maybe 20 years ago, and two or three years ago decided to see if I could read the whole thing with a critical eye. I could! I picked up this biography of Dostoevsky by a historian whose work on Dostoevsky David Foster Wallace (of course) wrote good things about. It was a very readable book, but I ran out of time to read both this tome and The Brothers Karamazov simultaneously and on a bit of a deadline, so I stopped 200 or 300 pages in. I like to think I’ll go back to it some day.

I had heard that Flaubert was the quintessential stylist, and so what better way to read this classic than en Français? That turns out to be difficult if you don’t really know much Français. I tried a few years anyway, with a translation app on my phone to help me quickly get a handle on vocabulary I was missing. It was tedious and frustrating, and maybe one day I’ll try again (in English if not in French), but here we are three books into the shelf and I’ve completed not a one of them.

The Whale I read a few years back along with a bunch of other secondary material when leading an online group read of Moby-Dick. This one is obviously mis-shelved down here among the black books. It was a nice read. I don’t know if I’ll go back to it, though, but I hang onto it just in case, since as soon as I get rid of it, I know something will compel me to read Moby-Dick again and I’ll regret the loss of this secondary source.

DeLillo I tend to keep, figuring I’ll do some big completist type survey of his work some day. I read Mao II a few years ago and was I think so-so on it.

The Swerve was neat — a rare bit of nonfiction that I picked up in part because when I saw the title, it made me think back fondly to my old college class on Milton (my professor introduced me then to the concept of swerve).

This edition of Heart of Darkness is illustrated by Matt Kish, who also illustrated the Moby-Dick we saw on the last shelf. It’s really lovely to look at, and it was fun to see some of the ways in which he departed in this book from some of the themes and gestures so prevalent in his Moby-Dick art (though some of those remain).

I forget what I thought of the Eggers book. Probably I thought it was Eggers-ish, which is to say maybe a little too cute and proud of itself but also with something worthwhile in it. I think I recall that a friend sent me this book (his own copy) and didn’t want it back, and it’s not super clear to me whether I’m to cherish it as a gift or send it out to someone else in the world to enjoy. I suspect the latter.

And finally, Look Homeward, Angel. I grew up in North Carolina, though not in the mountains that Wolfe writes of. Wolfe is celebrated at UNC, which I attended. I remember seeing in some museum or pamphlet about him while I was in school there a photo of him standing beside knee-high stacks of paper that made up, I believe, this book. I should love this book, but I’ve twice now started it without finishing it. I don’t remember that anything has particularly turned me off to it, but I’ve just petered out for one reason or another. On a trip for work recently, I watched the fairly recent movie Genius, which tells the story of Wolfe and his relationship with editor Max Perkins. I enjoyed the movie, though I can’t imagine why they picked Jude Law to play Wolfe, and it made me want to try the book again. Maybe the third time’ll be the charm.

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One thought on “Bookshelves #11”

I saw the movie fairly recently, too. I’d never heard of Wolfe before that. I enjoyed the movie, but I’m not sure I’d be able to read his fiction, it just seemed too…. intense, at least as portrayed in the movie.